Is a mad human higher than a mad animal?
Answer Podcast
Transcript
This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
so if we say the consciousness in humans is higher than that in animals and we also say how does the consciousness connect with the mind suppose there is a mad human and a mad animal so is the mad human really higher or how is all this correlated see the mind is the channel for consciousness so it is like suppose somebody is watching a cricket match that is happening in India so the TV screen is a channel through which the person’s consciousness is going to the cricket match in India so like that the physical world is the outer reality and the mind is the channel through which the soul so soul is here, mind is here and then the soul’s consciousness is going through the mind to the body to the world outside, so now there is a door over there the door is open then if we are here we can see through that door outwards so that the mind is a doorway for the soul’s consciousness to be routed outwards now there are different doors which may have different degrees of transparency some doors may be semi-transparent, some doors may be fully transparent some doors may be fully opaque so Krishna talks about three degrees of covering of the soul in 3.38 so he says that just as the embryo is covered by the womb just as a mirror is covered by dust just as fire is covered by smoke similarly selfish desire covers all living beings so the Acharyas explain that these three refer to three different levels of species the womb covering the embryo refers to the plant species dust covering the mirror refers to the animal species and smoke covering fire refers to the human species so without going into the technicalities of three examples suffice it to say that these are different degrees of covering the smoke that is covering a fire that can be removed when you stoke the fire it goes away but if there is a mirror that is so thickly covered by dust you can’t even see there is a mirror you have to get a cloth and apply the cloth, rub the cloth scrub away the dust then the mirror will be seen and if a child is there in the womb, you cannot just get the child out, it has to go through its period of pregnancy and then after 8-9 months the child will come out so these are different degrees of covering so in principle when the soul acquires a human body the covering on the soul’s consciousness is more transparent the covering is less and because the covering is less the soul’s original nature is more manifested in the animal bodies the soul’s consciousness is more covered and that is why the original nature is not so much manifested what this means is that all living beings look for happiness a dog wants to eat a bone a cat wants to eat a rat but only we human beings we cook our food elaborately a cow will eat the same grass, generation after generation but we will cook sooner why is that? because the soul is the soul’s nature is to be constantly joyful whereas the body can offer pleasure only intermittently if I think of eating as my definition of pleasure then I can eat only 3-4 times, 5-6 times a day whatever if I think of mating as a source of pleasure, it can be only for a few minutes or whatever so none of the bodily activities can offer constant pleasure and when the soul’s consciousness is developed more in the human body in the animal body the soul is satisfied with whatever pleasure is offered by the body that is the intermittent pleasure but when the consciousness is developed more in the human form then the soul wants more pleasure than what the body can offer and that is why through nature, through the body we can get some pleasure but you want to improve that pleasure and what the Bhagavatam tells us is that we should improve but that improvement should be vertical it should be spiritual not just horizontal by improving things materially we won’t get much more pleasure, little bit more but if we improve our consciousness spiritually then we will get more pleasure we will get constant pleasure but the point is that the soul’s original nature is much more developed in the human body and it is also capable of much more development further in that sense the soul is different from the soul in the human body is covered by a thinner covering the door which is the mind is more transparent now having said this now what is the difference between say a mad human being and a mad dog the madness madness can be because of various causes sometimes the brain may be damaged or whatever the person may just emotionally crumble because of the pressures of life and they may go mad whatever the reason it is that the person the soul still has the potential to think deeply to think of life’s deeper questions but at that particular point a person has lost the resources so it’s like say there is a there are two people who are wandering two children who are wandering on the streets one is a millionaire’s son who has forgotten that I am a millionaire another is a pauper’s son who is also away from his home now both are in a similar condition at that time but there is a difference in their position, the difference is that he is a millionaire’s son so like that the human being who has gone mad and the dog who has gone mad, both of them may be incoherent in their behavior right now but that is because that is because their physical apparatus by which they function that has become impaired but the soul in principle has the capacity but just the just the tool for operating it is not working to give another example suppose say I am working on a computer there is a dog who comes on the computer if the computer is damaged neither I nor the dog will be able to do anything with it but if the computer is working also the dog will not be able to do much with it so the dog does not have the capacity so when we talk about madness madness is basically a damage of the tool for functioning but the original person who is functioning they themselves can be of different calibers so the animal and a human in that sense they are different they are at different levels of consciousness does it answer your question?